Nigeria in their hearts

She will be a good, modest Muslim wife. Her education will not stop her from getting married and bearing children.

This is the pitch Father Chiedozie Ezeribe makes to parents and guardians of children he tries to recruit for his day care and elementary school in northern Nigeria. It’s a region where education for girls is considered subversive, and he has learned it’s best to use a soft sell.

These days he is making another pitch, aided by La Jolla philanthropist Jean Colarusso: Open your hearts and pocketbooks for a middle and high school, so they can keep learning after sixth grade. Give Nigeria’s poorest children a chance.

At a spaghetti dinner fundraiser Thursday in La Jolla, he donned his priestly garb and she wore a flowery caftan, a gift sewn by Nigerian nuns. Together, the duo tried to persuade around 150 people that Nigeria matters. They ended up raising around $11,000.

A year or even a month ago, their proposition would have been more remote. This time, their message was bolstered by the schoolgirl kidnapping tragedy that has struck African’s most populous country — recently identified as the continent’s largest economy — and kindled a global human rights crisis.

Colarusso is petite and closing in on 80. She speaks softly about Big Topics like death, and rape, and thirst.

Ezeribe is about half her age, and as he ticks off his activities it seems he has more jobs than there are days in the week — pastor, educator, hospital administrator, NGO coordinator, public health advocate, fundraiser.

It’s a tossup who has more energy.

May 09, 2014. San Diego, CA. Father Chiedozie Ezeribe, left, and and philanthropist Jean Colarusso, president of Friends of the Poor, Inc., in the living room of Colarusso's La Jolla home.
Nancee E. Lewis

May 09, 2014. San Diego, CA. Father Chiedozie Ezeribe, left, and and philanthropist Jean Colarusso, president of Friends of the Poor, Inc., in the living room of Colarusso's La Jolla home.

He said he hopes these San Diegans will feel just as he feels, about those 275 children who were kidnapped on May 5 by terrorist group Boko Haram. A few days later, the group’s leader cackled in a grainy video that he will sell the girls on the international slave market.

“We feel with the mothers, we feel with the fathers. The mothers cannot eat. There is no way that fathers can sleep,” Ezeribe said. “We are feeling this right inside our bones, because Nigerian families are hurt, and these girls, only God knows what is happening to them.”

Hope. Health. Safety.

For Colarusso, Nigeria has been on the map for more than a decade. She is the priest’s partner in virtue, raising and donating funds to advance his work.

In 1982 she helped establish Friends of the Poor, a nonprofit that builds facilities and services including schools, orphanages and health programs. She is proud that she takes no salary and works out of her home, allowing 98 percent of donations go toward programs. When volunteers travel with her, they pay their way. “There’s no free lunch,” she said.

Children in the programs run by Father Ezeribe. Funds from the nonprofit of Jean Colarusso have made an impact at schools, hospitals, and clean water infrastructure.
Courtesy of Father Chiedozie Ezeribe